Chicago has the most lead pipes in the nation

Lead pipes are actually fine. They don't leach lead into the water unless you send something corrosive through them like what happened in Flint.

"Fine" might be overstating things, but yes we need to move the conversation toward water ph, which is probably at least as important as heavy metal pipes. Municipal water supplies need to be from clean alkaline sources.

The smart money is on our finding, long-term, that PVC and PEX and all the rest of the final-mile water delivery materials are also dangerous in the presence of acidic water.

And yet, when you try to do a basic web search for alkaline water, overwhelmingly the results are crazy overpriced bottled water and/or con artists selling "water ionizer" or other such nonsense.

ah the romans had em and they were fine cos the water never sat in the pipes for too long. just leave a tap running on drip and youll be safe